Glen Farley has covered the Patriots for The Enterprise since the Raymond Berry regime.

Belichick talks about Dolphins' Tannehill

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By Glen Farley

Glen Farley has covered sports for The Enterprise since 1978. His time on the Patriots beat dates back to the final year of the Raymond Berry regime, 1989. You could say his roots lie in Foxboro. He once won an award for a piece he wrote on the sod
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Glen Farley has covered sports for The Enterprise since 1978. His time on the Patriots beat dates back to the final year of the Raymond Berry regime, 1989. You could say his roots lie in Foxboro. He once won an award for a piece he wrote on the sod at Gillette Stadium.

Here's a partial transcript, from the Patriots media relations department, of head coach Bill Belichick's conference call with the media on Monday.

Obviously, Ryan Tannehill, the rookie quarterback of the Dolphins, was a major topic:

Q: What is your takeaway of Ryan Tannehill and how has he grown as a rookie quarterback to this point? When you face rookie quarterbacks, do you look at it as a chance to throw new things at a guy who isn’t familiar with you guys?

BB: No, not really. I don’t think we really spend too much time talking about what year the quarterback is or any of that type of thing. We just look at the way he plays and what their scheme is and how they try to run their offense and try to figure out what’s the best thing we can do to defend it. I think that’s a lot more the conversation and the focus than what year the guy is or anything like that. He’s obviously a very athletic player. They run a number of plays where they move the pocket with him. There are plays where they don’t move the pocket but he of course has the skill to run and escape – different but similar to what we talked about with [Jake] Locker, going back to the Tennessee game, that kind of fast and athletic. A guy that played another position in college; I think that speaks to his athleticism. He’s shown a lot of poise throughout the whole season. With Coach [Mike] Sherman there, there’s, I’m sure, good chemistry there and a good relationship and some carryover into what they’ve done in the past when he was with him at Texas A&M relative to reads or ‘check with mes’ or offensive packages that they use, however they do it. It looks like there’s a good level of comfort there. They’re certainly not afraid to put the ball in his hands in critical situations and he’s done a good job of delivering for them. [He’s] done a good job with that team; he’s a good player.

Q: It seems like Ryan Tannehill’s familiarity with Mike Sherman has made it less jarring than a quarterback coming into a new system, hasn’t it?

BB: That’s a tough question to answer. I haven’t been there so I don’t really know all the details of that. I know Coach [Joe] Philbin has his system too from Green Bay and how much of that all marries together and is the same or what the differences are between that and what they did at A&M, I’m sure there are similarities but I’m sure there are some differences too. I’m not sure. But obviously Tannehill is a smart kid that can pick up things. You can see that because they change some of the things they’re doing game plan-wise or formation-wise. Again, he handles things at the line of scrimmage frequently during the game: checks or audibles or adjustments in protection. You can see him doing those things. He definitely has a good command of the offense, no question about that.